View full sizePHOTOS BY SUSAN GRABEL "Dental Problems" by Linda Wasylewski and "Marc" by Pat DeCicco.

STATEN ISLAND, NY -- Grim doings — death, anxiety, and the burden of time — are preying on the minds of some of the sculptors in "3DSI," an eight-person show at the Art at Bay gallery this month.

Sounds dreary? It isn't. Quite the opposite.

Two participants, Susan Grabel and Linda Wasylewski are actually grieving (Grabel over her folks and Wasylewski over the death of her husband) but both have found that the losses can spur fresh thinking. One has made an austere shrine of photographs and quotations; the other, some unforgettably expressive ceramic heads.

The show's third figurative sculptor, Pat DeCicco, makes uncannily life-like heads and figures out of clay. Janice Patrignani also works in clay, making ornate, decorated entities that stand on their own three or four feet.

Joyce Goldstein and Tomas Ronse suspend work overhead. Ronse turns weathered debris — some of it might be rusty auto-body parts — into mobiles. A single orb hanging among them suggests a tiny planet, lost in an asteroid field.

Goldstein makes hangings, legible three-dimensional forms, like hearts, out of handmade paper. Her colorful pieces are in the window of the storefront gallery. The huge ceramic green toad is hers too.

Anne Marie McDonnell's microcosmic standing bronzes present a whole world that stands on stilt-like insect legs. On its flat, high plateau tiny humanoid creatures live a life we can't even begin to imagine.

"3DSI" continues through Sunday in Art at Bay, 70 Bay St., St. George. The gallery is open Saturday and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m.